


gleam as mosses and fireflies do

by Hiruma_Musouka



Series: Through the Looking-Glass, Weirdly [14]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Non-human characters, Tobirama is someone whose curiosity might kill him if he was an OUNCE less prepared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 13:46:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9823217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hiruma_Musouka/pseuds/Hiruma_Musouka
Summary: There are spirits that live in the woods. If you manage to see them as themselves, they will burn as bright and as beautiful as stars and hope and adventure andpyres. They might look like you, talk like you, and even love like you, but remember to be careful.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheDeepSeaWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDeepSeaWitch/gifts).



> Lithe-cloud on tumblr wrote a story in my ask box that was stuck in her head and I had an idea for a continuation so I wrote it. Because why not? Here's what she wrote.
> 
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> _Okay, I've been reading the otherworldly comics of charminglyantiquated and all I've got going through my head is like this AU where Senju family lives close to the border of a forest. A deep woods, where the further in you travel, the stranger and more otherworldly things seem. Don't leave the path, Butsuma tells his sons, and don't look twice at the things you see. Their mother tells them of tricks to ward off any unwanted attention; salt water, iron, bamboo blossoms are said to repel them. Lavender allowed them to find you easier, and their mother destroyed any lavender plants found growing near the home._
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> _Butsuma take his boys out into the woods only once when they’re older. He shows them the burn marks on the trees and the ground. He points out the sweet smell of camellia that lingers in the air even with no flowers around. He tells his boys that in these woods wanders spirits, beings born of fire and heat and smoke. They will lure you in with innocent guises, human at first glance. If you look deeper, though, you can see the fires in their eyes and the smoke in their hair and the burn of embers under their skin._
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> _Do not ask anything of them, he tells his boys, not even their name. For they will ask things in return, and will not stop asking until they have everything that you are. Do not look into their eyes, he tells them, for their eyes can strip you of the world around you, until only they remain as the single, solid point in all of existence. Most importantly, he tells them, do not love them, and do not seek out their love. For if they give it to you, they will never let you go, and you will never return from the forest._
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> _So the Senju brothers grow up, with their mother sewing charms into their clothes and their father forcing iron tools into their hands until they stank of metal. Hashirama had a close encounter, once, with a boy-child like heat and fire and smoke, but Butsuma chased the boy away with bamboo flowers._
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> _Tobirama had always been drawn to the forest, though. It was deep, and dark, and held more secrets than even his books could teach him. He’d followed Butsuma out that day, when his father had chased the boy away. He’d looked into eyes like fire and those eyes haunted his dreams, taunting him with all that he did not know. So he’d looked through all the books he could find. He’d found their name (“… the Uchiha, a fire spirit who prizes feelings of love and passion above all else…”) and what they were (“it’s thought that Uchiha are born from the fire that ignites from trees struck by lightning…”)._
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> _He spends years searching for every scrap of information he can find until, finally, he packs his bags and sets out into the deep woods. Hashirama, Kawarama and Itama are all still asleep in their beds, and he feels bad that he didn’t leave them more than a note, but curiosity gnaws at him, a siren call that invades his dreams with dark eyes like fire and dark hair like smoke and skin like embers._
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> _Tobirama steps into the woods, and then he steps off the path even as he leaves a trail of brightly colored string behind him. He sees things that his father warned him of, things that twist in the corner of his eye, burns on trees and rocks that smell of camellia with no flowers around. Eyes follow him, but he ignores them. Tobirama comes across a clearing. A man who is not a man greets him, with eyes like fire, hair like smoke, skin like embers, and a smirk like a secret._
> 
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> [[original post here on tumblr](https://hiruma-musouka.tumblr.com/post/157405008335/okay-ive-been-reading-the-otherworldly-comics-of)]

"That's foolish of him," Hikaku murmurs, flashing from his hiding spot inside a berry bush to underneath a tree root as he observes the white-haired human leaving the path and heading into the forest.

Izuna laughs quietly, voice crackling like burning leaves. "Foolish humans are the best kind of human, Hikaku. Although this one isn't quite stupid _enough_ , I think."

Hikaku's red flame flickers in question from the root shadow he's hidden in and Izuna slides out of his hiding spot in the canopy. His black smoke curls down the tree trunk, purple embers flashing in the darkness of the night as the older spirit surges over the forest floor, slipping through shadows until he reaches the point where the human had left the road. Hikaku follows in his wake, dimming his own brightness from brush-fire to candle flame and quickly hiding the remainder of his light within the protection of Izuna's smoke as he follows his elder out from under the concealing cover of the bushes.

The human doesn't appear to have noticed them yet. He's still walking onwards, a ball of bright blue thread unraveling steadily in his wake.

"Look Hikaku," Izuna hisses, nudging his cousin with a lick of flame. Once Hikaku's attention shifts, Izuna reaches out towards the thread at the edge of the path with a tendril of transparent smog. He curls around it, igniting a purple flame within the muffling haze of his body.

The thread, rather than burning as it rightfully should, begins to let off a small amount of steam.

"Ahhh," Hikaku whispers, "the human soaked the thread in salt-water to keep spirits from destroying it."

"Or untying it," Izuna adds, motioning towards the end of the thread where it's knotted tightly around a loop of cold iron that's stabbed deep into the road itself. "Come on, we need to find Madara!"

"Shouldn't we follow the man instead?" Hikaku questions futilely as Izuna flows upward in a whirling rush.

Hikaku sighs, forgoing Izuna's path back up into the heights of the tree branches and diving down into the earth instead, following the ashy trails of burned roots and incinerated leaf litter that had been created by other Uchiha in the years and centuries before.

Hikaku might not be small enough to be a ground fire - he'll break the surface and become visible if he ever tries to burn a new ground route himself - but he's also not a firestorm like Madara or a major wildfire like Izuna. Unlike the brothers who are just too _massive_ to move through the ground without ruining years of work, Hikaku can squeeze himself through the paths very quickly as long as he's careful.

"—want to do?" Hikaku hears Izuna ask somewhere above him as he surfaces near the edge of a clearing flooded with Madara's heat waves. Hikaku glances around to be doubly sure that the red-eyed human isn't within range to see him and then rises up, shooting into the canopy of the giant lightning-struck sequoia tree that both Madara and Izuna call home.

Madara hums thoughtfully at Izuna's question, resting in human form on a thick tree branch with his back against the trunk as he cradles a blanket full of soft orange fire. Izuna's sooty form pools over his brother's outstretched legs, purple flames burning stronger and brighter and more freely within the thick, comforting protections of their birth-tree as he waits for his brother's response.

"How old is the human?" Madara asks, eyes narrowed into the distance. Red swirls in his dark pupils as he reaches out, brushing his power against different members of his kin and briefly sharing their vision as he tries to catch sight of the human wandering in their forest.

The new babe - Kagami, Hikaku thinks he was named - whimpers as the ambient energy flow changes with Madara's technique. He shifts restlessly in the older male's arms, but the firestorm spirit just tosses his own head roughly, throwing his hair over his shoulder so it brushes the boy's skin.

Hikaku flickers uncertainly, about to offer to hold the young spirit if Madara needs to concentrate, but Kagami coos happily. The little thing reaches out with licks of orange light, flames batting fruitlessly at Madara's long black hair, and in fits and starts the tiny fire spirit pulls himself into human form so he can wind chubby hands around Madara's hair.

"I think he's less than twenty?" Izuna offers thoughtfully, smoke wafting up and out as he expands several feet outward before compressing back down into the body of a black-haired human that looks similar to his brother. "He smells difficult - iron on his skin and water in his soul - and he isn't utterly stupid or ignorant since he's using soaked string to find his way back, but we could probably consume him with careful effort. Kagami could definitely use something substantial to feed on so that he can catch fire properly, and young human lives burn so brightly, don't you think? They're much more vivid than their elders."

"I think I found... _oh,_ " Madara breathes, blinking in surprise before an interested smirk crosses his lips. "I know this one."

"You do?" Izuna perks up, shuffling sideways to get closer and ignoring his brother's disgruntled complaints at having a full grown man sitting on his thighs. The wildfire spirit slips a hand under Madara's long bangs, pressing his palm gently over his brother's right eye and holding his other hand over his own matching eye.

"What are you seeing that I didn't see?" Izuna asks, piggybacking off Madara's borrowed sight to reexamine the man. "We haven't had humans come in the woods from the east in ages except for travelers, and I hadn't thought any of those had caught your attention before."

"He's a Senju," Madara explains, affectionate exasperation and irritation in his voice as he stares up at his brother. Izuna freezes at the news, and Madara deftly grabs Izuna's ponytail away from a tiny waving hand, bouncing Kagami in his arms to distract the pouting fire whirl from his lost potential plaything.

"A _Senju_ ," Izuna savors slowly, a dark, hungry smirk sliding onto his face. "Well now... I had thought the man just ran across one of your trails or something and that was why he had a faint imprint of your mark on his heart. Are you saying that one caught _sight_ of you years ago instead?"

He runs his hand across Madara's forehead, brushing aside his brother's smoke-filled hair to reveal pale skin and old, shiny pink scars. Hikaku shifts his attention away from the firestorm's face as Madara's fists tighten in Kagami's blankets, but Izuna's smile just gets cheerful and sharp as a sheathed blade as he touches the damaged skin.

"A Senju is perfect, Madara. They _owe_ us, after all," Izuna murmurs, tracing a fingertip around the familiar bamboo blossom scars left on his brother's face. It's a real pity that that human father had managed to escape their forest all those years ago after throwing that damnable so-called sacred plant at Madara. Now _there_ was a human who had definitely deserved to be burned alive. It's infuriating that he had managed to get himself and his brat of a son across running water before any of their surface fire kin had caught up to him. He had _deserved_ to be caught in an eye of fire and have his world stripped away until all that was left were the purest parts of him.

What kind of man attacked a kid just for wanting to speak with and play with his son? Madara had been _weird_ for being interested in a human boy, but asking questions and being friendly is no reason to come up and immediately assault someone!

Damn humans always have the most violent societies. If they're all like that then it's no wonder why the few humans who fall in love with an Uchiha never want to return to their homes. Izuna certainly wouldn't return if he was in their place. Although...

"I thought the brat you played with once had been a brunet that smelled like iron and _wood_?" Izuna muses, letting Madara's hair fall back to shade his face.

His older brother gives him a sharp look. "He was, and don't start getting vindictive, Izuna: this is a different human."

"If it's a different human, why do you recognize him?" Izuna chirps sweetly.

"Because I _saw_ him hiding right before that man recognized what I was, now don't _do_ anything!" Madara orders, shifting Kagami to one arm and shoving his plotting brother off his legs and onto the branch so he can get up. "Actually here, you need to hold Kagami anyway."

"Wait, why me!" Izuna squawks, trying not to fumble the baby as Madara gently shoves the fire whirl spirit into his arms before coaxing the kid to let go of his hair. "I thought you were supposed to be holding him today! I did it yesterday. It should definitely be Hikaku's responsibility next if you're skiving off early."

"Except you're better than Hikaku at holding a solid human form and _someone_ has to cradle the boy at all times. He's certainly not going to get the hang of turning human if the ground fires try and teach him - their energy is nothing like a fire whirl. Besides—" Madara grins at him "—this will keep you too occupied to butt in while I go investigate."

"We should burn the Senju for fuel, Madara," Izuna argues. "Madara. _Madara!_ "

Izuna twitches as his stubborn ass of a brother bursts into thick smoke, falling to the forest floor in a swirl of ashes and blue fire before reforming to walk across the nearby clearing.

"My brother is a stubborn idiot. I love him dearly, but he is a stubborn, optimistic _idiot_. Why is he such an ass, Hikaku?" Izuna asks rhetorically, cradling Kagami's head and wincing as the kid yanks violently on his hair. It's really not fair that the boy never yanks on Madara's hair. As far as Izuna's concerned, his brother absolutely deserves to have his hair yanked on.

"I don't think he can help it," HIkaku offers lightly, moving further down the branch as a precautionary measure. "It seems like being an ass is something of a dominant trait in this branch of our family."

It had been wise to move. Hikaku might be one of the fastest fire spirits among the Uchiha, but even with the advantage of the extra distance Izuna's foot still nearly went through him.

"Just you watch, Hikaku," Izuna promises with a handsome smile that foretells nothing but trouble, "as soon as Kagami's flames catch hold properly and he doesn't need our energy as kindling I'm going to teach him so many _fun_ things. You're going to love it. You'll be _perfect_ for demonstrations."

"Don't you think that's a disproportionate response?" Hikaku asks weakly, flames shrinking down to the size of a firefly at the thought of what Izuna could be planning.

Izuna just pats Kagami on the back, from all appearances in a much better mood as he gets to his feet and starts carefully jumping between branches, maneuvering into a better position to watch out for his brother.

... Hikaku should have kept his mouth shut. He really should have.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "[Burning a Light at Night](http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/15057)" by Kiyoko Nagase.


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